Morton exhaled slowly as he considered thewords he had just read. Just like all the other entries which detailedwhat must have been awful circumstances for the men involved, it was written insuch a blasé, detached way as to render him speechless.
‘Makes you wonder how on earth anyonesurvived…’ Margaret uttered. ‘I mean, you can’t imagine just standing ina wet, muddy trench all night having previously been bombed and seeing yourcomrades killed day after day.’
‘Awful,’ Morton said. ‘Just awful.’
‘I’m kind of glad we’re not readinganymore tonight.’
‘Me too,’ Morton agreed.
‘Shall we have a cuppa?’ Margaretsuggested.
‘Or we could go down the pub and joinUncle Jim and Juliette for a quick nightcap?’ Morton said with a grin.
Margaret nodded. ‘Let’s go.’
ChapterFive
22nd December 1914, Le Touret, France
Thecompany sang, without conviction, banal repetitive songs that spoke of home andof victory, as they marched wearily like a long column of ants. CharlesFarrier was not singing. The greatcoat on his back seemed to be gettingheavier with every new drop of rain. It felt as though for every mile hehad marched, another concrete block had been added to his load. They hadmarched roadside from their comfortable billets in Le Touret, heading to thefront, passing medical facilities, gun lines, storage depots and shelleddeserted homes, whose occupants had long since fled. During the lastmile, war traffic in both directions had increased substantially, withmotorbuses and horse-drawn carriages busy parcelling soldiers to and from thefront.
Charles raised his nose into the air;there was a definite smell lingering, which was particular to an entrenched warzone: it was the smell of mud, death and decay.
Glancing at a row of shattered wagons andhorses in various states of decomposition, Charles failed to hear the largemotorbus roaring behind him. A sudden wave of grey water sprayed overCharles’s puttees and boots. He looked up angrily and went to shout out,but then he saw those being transported in the bus: men in shredded khaki withvarious parts of their bodies and souls left behind in the trenches. Menwho stared out, unblinking into the abyss, unable to articulate theirindividual horror.
Charles returned his focus to watching thefootfall of the man in front, trying to dismiss every other thought from hismind; but it was impossible. In just four months, he had witnessed andendured so much.
After being shelled heavily outside Ypres,the Battalion had been ordered to move on and help restore the line atZandvoorde. However, disaster had struck when their Commanding Officer,Lieutenant Colonel Roland, had taken a short cut across open countryside,causing the horse upon which he rode to bolt towards the heavy fire. TheCommanding Officer had been killed instantly. The Battalion had forgedahead, soon occupying frontline trenches, directly battling against heavyGerman artillery and gunfire.
Charles recalled with consternation whathad happened next and how he was lucky to have survived. When Battalionscouts had discovered that German troops, armed with heavy machine guns, hadoccupied a section of nearby trench and part of Château Wood, the Battalion hadbeen divided to attack the enemy. Charles and the rest of ‘A’, ‘B’ and‘C’ companies had been ordered to advance across open country towards theGerman positions in the wood, whilst ‘D’ company attacked the trenches. Part way across the field, the Germans had opened fire and Charles had watchedwith renewed horror, as his friends and comrades had been cut down in front ofhim. The cries, the pleas for help and the anguished yelling of menrealising that their life was about to come to an abrupt end had risen into thetrees, merging with gunfire, explosions and German voices: a cacophony ofviolent death and despair. The Battalion had been ordered into yetanother retreat. Charles had survived. Fifty-six men from theBattalion had not.
The singing began to fade and the men infront of Charles seemed to react to something. He looked up and realisedthat they had reached the opening of the first sinuous communication trench.
Charles drew in a sharp breath and felthis chest tighten. ‘Here we go, then,’ he muttered.
‘Let’s do it!’ Len remarked, sharing inthe jaunty joie de vivre that was oft rehearsed at the front, butincreasingly rarely believed.
The mouth of the communication trench drewthem inside, one by one. Their songs were over. Their voices weresilenced. Their pace slowed.
Narrow and curved, the trench had sufferedbadly from the inclement weather. The floor was one thick, solid carpetof mud that reached out for each soldier’s feet, sucking them down, unwillingto release its grip.
‘Come on, we haven’t got all day,’ shoutedBuggler at the entrance of the trench.
In front of him, soldiers bit theirtongues as they physically picked up their feet from the consuming trench base,their progress to the front being made one slow step at a time.
Charles turned to speak to Jones, hisfriend from ‘B’ Company, who was directly behind him, but the mud refused toallow his foot to swivel, sending Charles sliding forwards. ‘Damn thisbloody place,’ he cursed under his breath, as he corrected himself and rubbedhis hands down the sides of his greatcoat.
‘I beg your pardon, Farrier?’ Bugglerbarked. ‘Is there a problem here?’
‘No, nothing, sir,’ Charles replied.
Slowlyand painfully across eight long hours, the Seaforth Highlanders draggedthemselves out of the front line and the Second Battalion dragged themselvesin, with the various companies being distributed throughout the trench system.
With a deep satisfaction evident on hislopsided grin, Buggler directed Charles and the rest of ‘A’ Company to theright-hand side of the fire trench; the part which was severely flooded.
The men silently obeyed their orders,shuffling themselves ever deeper into the foetid water, their rifles raised,surrender-like, high above their heads.
Charles felt each layer of
